"raghhh!" Another scream of a person resounded through the air after that, and from that point, the whole village turned into a horrifying scene as the screaming voices of people echoed.
"What is going on out there?"
Graaa...
Wafe...
I heard a kind of sound like dogs running around while barking. But it was much more intense in this night. At the same time as those growling sounds, in the next second, what I heard was the painfully screaming sound of the villagers.
At that moment, while I was looking out, I saw a man running toward the direction I was in. He was coming to the Chief's house.
But I saw behind him a large wolf chasing him. The wolf had an abnormally large body compared to the wolf I saw on earth. It was even larger than the man it was following. Its eyes were red and left a shining mist in the path it passed.
"Kha!" The man looked back as he was running and saw the large wolf behind him. "Aaa, please let me live!" he screamed and tried to speed up, but the four-legged wolf only took two to three jumps before it landed upon the man's back and pushed him to the ground.
"Arghh!" he screamed in agony as the wolf began to bite onto his arm and rip it apart from his body. After that, the wolf tossed the hand into the air and swallowed it in one bite.
From the wolf's mouth, blood fell down to the man under its feet. The man looked at it with fear and pain , after eating his hand, the wolf looked down toward him and opened its mouth, biting the man's face as he screm and ripping it apart from the head.
I looked at all this happening and didn't feel a bit of sympathy or pity for the man. I knew my human nature was loosing, but I couldn't fight the inevitable. The only thought I had was curiosity about the wolf.
After eating the man, the wolf lifted up its head and looked toward the bright moon, howling loudly.
"hff," after howling, it suddenly began to sniff and turned its gaze right toward me.
"Shit," I hurriedly lowered myself and hid under the window, but I heard the foot sound and growling of the wolf as it came toward my direction.
My heart was beating rapidly, and I knew that thing was certainly coming after my scent. If it comes to fighting them I didn't have any hope of beating it, and with all those sounds, I was sure this creature was not alone and has more companion to it.
I put my hand onto the bag and grabbed the potion that the witch gave me.
"There's no need to be feared by the sama kind," but at that moment, the woman walked toward the window and looked out from it toward the wolf.
I heard the wolf's stepping sounds cease, and standing up, I looked toward it and saw that it was looking at the woman with an observing gaze.
In the next second, it suddenly turned around and howled toward the sky. After that, it suddenly began to writhe as something happened to its body. The hair on its skin began to fall as it abruptly transformed into a human figure, but not a complete one; it still had some features of a wolf too.
Seeing it, I suddenly remembered the werewolves I had seen in those movies.
After transforming into a half-human, half-wolf figure, it once again looked back toward the woman and nodded, which the woman responded to with a nod back. After that, it walked away toward the village.
"Is that a werewolf?" I asked.
"Some call them that, but most know them by the name 'cursed beast,'" the woman replied, still gazing at the village, but at the same time, a sword held against her neck.
"What's this? I thought we became friends," she asked from Akiel, who was holding his sword close to her neck.
"Are we? Then answer these questions of mine first," said Akiel in a cold voice. He moved the sword he held against her neck more closer to her as he spoke.
"OK... Ok, just ask what do you want to know," the woman responded.
"First things first, who are you, and what are your intentions?" asked Akiel.
"Me? I'm a skinshaper, as you already saw. And as for my intentions, I was doing what every one of our kind does—offering preys to our lord," she replied.
"To your lord? Do I have to know who it is," questioned Akiel.
"Don't worry, you will know very soon," the woman said to me with a teasing tone that felt ominous.
"Do you have a name or something like that?" Akiel inquired.
"Call me Absa, so I guess your questions are over,"
"No, you said I can get out from here safely if I wait a few seconds, but now there's a damn werewolfs roaming around the village. Can you pharpse explain what you said to me?"
"If you want to get out of here, you can obviously do that, but only if I come with you. So, if you put down this sword, we can get out of here, because once the ritual starts, there's no escaping for any of us," Absa explained.
Her words made me uneasy. What kind of ritual was she talking about?... But right now, what's important to me is getting out of here.
"Are you promising to bring me out of this village safely?" I asked.
"I will, as a matter of fact. I know that you don't believe my word alone, so here," she suddenly lifted up her hand and placed it upon her chest. Closing her eyes, she opened them again, and at that moment, her eyes shined in a blue color.
"I, Absa, will swear upon my heart that I will accompany...
"Aaro...ahem, Akiel," I almost said my old name.
Akiel out of this village safely, and if that promise is broken by me, then this life of mine shall be offered to the almighty king of deviants."
When she said those last words, a sudden asura energy appeared in her eyes and then disappeared.
"Phew! , are you still doubting me now? As a skinshaper, that was the highest level of promising we can give to someone. It was sworn upon our own heart with the witness being our one true lord, the deviant king, so you never have to doubt me breaking the promise."
With her word After thinking for a bit, I sheathed my sword.
"Good decision, because we've already wasted half of our time here. Come on, let's go," Absa said as she jumped out from the window, and I followed suit. Once outside, I looked back toward the inside of the room and saw Reika.
"If you're the wife of the chief, then isn't she your daughter?"
"No, she's the daughter of his late wife. Once I came into his life, he left her and made me his new wife. But the pain of losing her husband to someone else might have made her upset because later on she committed suicide, leaving her daughter in the care of the chief," she replied, moving forward.
"So, you and the chief are lovers, I guess," even though I asked that, I knew it was not something possible.
Absa gazed back at me.
"A lot of questions, huh? Well, long story short, this is a solitary village, and because of that, I saw this place as the perfect spot for my new offerings. Being that guy's wife made things much easier. But before I could start any of my work, these guys managed to find another one like me hidden among them. How pathetic it is to get caught by humans. Tch,"
She showed some disgust when mentioning that.
While she was telling me this, we continued to move through a road in the village, but suddenly, a wolf jumped onto one of the house roofs and looked toward us. But once it saw Absa, it looked away from us.
"Do these wolves and you have any familiarity with each other?" I asked.
"We do not, but like us, they also serve under one lord, the deviant king."
"Oh,.. by the way, I'm a bit curious, why did the two of you do that thing at the cage? Is it something like a tradition or..."
"That guy was just an inferior skinshaper, so he couldn't figure out I'm a skinshaper as well. So, using that, I was just playing with him a bit, being the wife of the chief who fell under the beauty of a skinshaper," she laughed after saying that.
"But while doing that, I got to know that he was not alone, and in fact, there's a whole bunch of groups expecting his return with news of new offerings. So, once I heard that, I decided to let them get this village."
Walking in the dimly lit room, she finished her talking and became silent. For a while, neither of us talked among each other.
"Ugh, now that I think about it, you said you're a superior one, so these werewolves, are they also a superior race like you?" breaking the silence between us, I asked her.
"No, only one among them is of the superior kind like me. All the others are just inferiors. How they knew me is because of their abnormal and highly sensitive smell and sense."
While she was saying that, I realized that we actually came outside of the village without any problem. I touched the bag once again, feeling that it was safe with me. I felt a bit of a satisfying feeling, the only sad thing is I lost the broom.
"I should thank you for this," I said, looking at Absa.
But at that moment, I smelled a deep metallic-like smell, the smell of blood. It came with a wind that blew from the village.
Once I looked at the village, what I saw was countless humans piled up upon each other on the ground right at the entrance of the village. This scene was way too gruesome for me to even imagine.
Kids, women, elders, all of them were dead and ripped to pieces. The reason I could see them all so brightly is because there were shining fire torches placed around this pile of flesh.
Not a single complete body is among those things; all of them are body parts ripped apart.
"Are you curious? We can wait a bit longer. I also want to see our lord once again," Absa said as she stood closer to me.
"Your lord?"
"Yes, the ritual. It's for summoning our lord into this world,"
Thud!
Suddenly, overlapping her voice, I heard the sound of a staff hitting the ground from the direction of the village. As I looked, what I saw was a figure wearing a sheep's skin and a goat's skull upon it head.
Seeing him gave me a creepy sensation.